THEY say that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned but that's an old adage that Anthea Turner and Ginger Spice, Geri Halliwell, obviously have little truck with. Instead, over the past few weeks they have evinced a near-saintly capacity for forgiveness, through their respective displays of forgiving Chris Evans for his much-publicised sins against them.
Evans has heaped scorn-a-plenty on the two in the past, sneering at Turner's girl-next-door image and, in an unfathomable burst of venom calculated to court controversy, famously declaring that he wanted to kick her mouth in. He got Halliwell's gander up by scoffing at the musical abilities of her band, the Spice Girls, and refusing to give them any airplay on his radio shows. Yet, far from breathing some well-deserved gusts of fire and brimstone all over the Carrot Topped One, Turner and Halliwell have got all cosy with Evans instead.
Turner has stepped out with him on a few occasions in the past few weeks. Dressed in a saucy pastiche of a nurse's uniform she canoodled with him for National Nurses' Day and then went on a bar-crawl with him which ended up at his pad, where he apparently cooked her pasta. Last Friday she repeated the date, accompanying him to a charity ball. In front of the cameras she spouted the classic ''just good friends'' line and drifted away, only to speed off into the night with him in a Land Rover Discovery later.
Halliwell, meanwhile, may have rolled her eyes dismissively when Evans flirted outrageously with her when her group guested on TFI Friday a few weeks ago, but she was obviously not completely immune to his so-called cheeky-chappie charms. She showed up at Evans's pad on Sunday for lunch, although she was clearly rattled that she was photographed there. Her attempts at evading snappers by trying to climb over the garden fence prove that while she enjoys his company she didn't want to betray her Girl Power credo by being seen as another famous notch on this serial romeo's belt.
Evans's ways suggest he's the grown-up version of the little boy in the playground dropping frogs in the schoolbag of the pretty girl in pigtails. What caused his apparent change of heart? It's doubtful that he simply woke up one morning and decided that Turner was a really lovely lass, after all. And I shouldn't think that overhearing a few bars of Stop! inspired a Damascus-road conversion, convincing him that the Spice Girls were, in fact, the musical sensation of the nineties and forcing him to see Ginger Spice in a new, more becoming light.
COULD it be that his previous insults were in fact manifestations of rampant attraction, with simmering lust being twisted into negative outbursts against the object of his attraction? Most women recognise this syndrome and know what it is like to be on the receiving end of hard times from men who secretly fancy them. But how many women would forgive men who had so appallingly bad-mouthed them?
But Evans, a proven arch-manipulator of the media, also seems to be a clever seducer, exercising Machiavellian techniques to get his own way. An ace tactician, he knows that the most effective weapon in any war is the power of surprise. Thus, playing up to his laddish, caddish image is a way of strengthening his hand because one of the most effective ways to win a fair lady is to disarm her, to confound her.
A male friend of mine revealed these secrets of the Seducer's Trade to me once. The bearer of a well-deserved appalling reputation as a lyin', cheatin' ladies man he reckoned that his infamy served him well when it came to pulling off fresh conquests. ''How so?'' I asked puzzled. ''When people have painted you that black you can never live up to their expectations, and you end up looking a lot whiter than they expect,'' he explained. ''Women always expect me to be an obvious old sleaze and are surprised when I turn out to be quite charming and caring towards them. They actually end up feeling guilty that they thought so badly of me,'' he chuckled. Playing on this element of doubt he usually bedded the targeted damsels fairly quickly.
Chris Evans also loves to create confusion. Vilify Turner - then send her a bouquet of flowers when she is at her most vulnerable, after Grant Bovey walked out on her. And it was relatively easy to put a salve on Halliwell's wounded pride. Dedicating an entire show of TFI Friday to the Spice Girls was the ultimate Punctured Ego Repair Kit.
Evans's success rate at pulling celebrity chicks he has previously viciously slagged must have left chaps across the country scratching their bonces, wondering what they were doing wrong, and doubtless vowing to ditch the sweetpeas 'n' sweet-words approach. But Lord help the nation's single women if he is deemed to be setting an example. If impressionable young lads take a leaf out of Evans's book the chat-up, already a far from sophisticated art in these isles, will degenerate even further into crude spats, as young lotharios attempt to impress the opposite sex with hostile jibes.
Forget about the mating season, it will be the bating season, with curses replacing compliments and ill-feeling abounding. Of course, verbal sparring between the sexes is a time-honoured tradition - on film the likes of Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy, and Humphrey Bogart perfected the ''Scorn Her then Seduce Her'' two-step. He may have slapped the odd hysterical female cheek but you certainly can't imagine Bogart threatening to kick his leading lady in the mouth as a preamble to romance.
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